The Other Woman
by margoleadbetter
Summary: After John moves out, leaving Caroline's life in pieces, will Kate be able to help her put it back together again? Caroline/Kate, set before the series. I've rated it T for now, but that might change as things progress.
1. Chapter One

**Disclaimer: Sally Wainwright owns _Last Tango in Halifax_. I am not her.**

Caroline Elliot bit her lip. The sun was setting dimly over the school gardens, another day finished, another chapter closed. That was that, then. The sun had set on the day, just as it had done on her marriage. Twenty-six hours since her loving, dependable, honest, heartless bastard of a husband had left her, and everything seemed still, as if the whole world were in limbo. The bridge between the endurable and the totally agonising. An eerie calmness had descended upon her. She didn't trust it, though, knowing it would melt away when she needed it most; as soon as she let her guard down. Sighing, she turned away from the window, pulling her coat down from the rack. She'd put it off long enough now. She had hung around at the school for as long as she possibly could after the pupils had left. Time to face the inevitable, detestable house. She could delay the pain, but she couldn't eliminate it altogether.

As she passed through the empty corridors, a door opened ahead of her, and Kate McKenzie stepped out, looking as pretty as ever. Oh, God, no, not people. Not now. Please, God, don't let her have to be friendly, not now, when it was all she could do to hold herself upright. The language teacher smiled, gently. Oh, no, here it came. Caroline tried to smile back, but it seemed to come out as more of a grimace. Oh, well, that would have to do.

"Doctor Elliot, I'm so sorry," Kate shook her head, not having to explain her concern. Caroline was touched. She'd called a brief meeting in the staff room earlier, not having been able to see a way out of telling them what had happened, and run straight back to her office once she'd finished, terrified that someone might make a joke, or, even worse, be sympathetic. As Kate was being now. She blinked, and then again, and bit her lip once more, harder this time. _Stop it, _she told herself, _you will not cry._

"Thank you," she nodded, and made another attempt at a smile. Apparently, it hadn't worked, because Kate frowned, before saying, "Oh, dear. You look like you could do with a drink." Caroline blanched. They had always got on well, and Caroline might almost have called Kate her friend, but they'd only ever seen each other at work. Anything more would have felt...well, inappropriate. Unprofessional. Oh, but she wanted to say "yes". She really wanted to. And what was so wrong with that, anyway, she challenged herself? It would only be two work friends sitting in a pub. It was no different from them sitting in the staff room, or her office, or a classroom. Not really. Except...well, except that it was, and she knew it.

"I probably could," she admitted, in spite of herself, and Kate visibly relaxed. Was she really that scary, the headmistress couldn't help wondering, or...or had she been nervous for a different reason? Inwardly, she kicked herself. No. None of those sorts of thoughts, thank you. Especially not now, but not ever, either, because that way madness lay. If experience had taught her one thing, it was that.

"Come on," the younger woman grinned, silently adding "we'll sort you out, don't you worry." One day she'd be brave enough to make a remark like that. Maybe. But that day wasn't today. It was too soon, anyway, and Caroline took her proffered arm, with a distracted "I'll have to ring the boys..."

It was William that answered the phone, flatly. His manner was almost enough to dissaude her, but when she voiced her worry, he urged her to go, promising that he and Laurence would be fine. Whether this was true, or her thoughtful son was simply more mindful of her welfare than his own, she couldn't tell. She went with Kate, regardless, and maybe she was wrong to do it, but perhaps it was about time she started being a little bit selfish. She was always putting herself last for John. She would have given anything to make their marriage work, and look where it had got her.

And so she went with Kate. And after that, nothing was quite the same again.


	2. Chapter Two

**Disclaimer: I still don't own anything.**

"It'll be okay," Kate promised, that evening, as Caroline took a steadying gulp of her obscenely large glass of wine, "you'll be alright," and the headmistress willed herself to believe her, just as she willed herself to believe that all she felt was gratitude when Kate squeezed her hand, reassuringly. When they parted, half an hour later, in the school car park, she thanked Kate, warmly, and Kate smiled, shaking her head, and that was that. There was no going back, and as Caroline tossed and turned that night, she cursed John, over and over, for leaving, for ruining everything, and for putting her in that position again.

The nights were the worst, she soon learned. Before long, she came to dread going to bed in the evening; kept putting it off, later and later and later. When she could delay it no more, she would lie there, flat on her back, feeling as if she were drowning, slowly but surely, in the sea of emptiness, and not even fighting it, just waiting to be put out of her misery. The nights were the worst, because she could no longer distract herself with the trivialities of day-to-day life. She might be able to run from John, and from Judith, and from all of those things that she could no longer pretend weren't tearing her apart. But she couldn't get away from herself, and as she lay there, with only herself for company, night after night, she wondered if she wasn't the one she hated the most.

When she got up, the feeling of relief would sweep over her, from head to toe, and she'd be thankful to have survived another night. Every morning, she was more tired than when she'd gone to bed, and her head pounded, and she felt like like a geriatric. Every morning, Kate was there, at the school, or on the other end of the phone, and her heart raced, and she felt like a teenager.


	3. Chapter Three

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything.**

_It was strange, the amount of damage that could be done from beyond the grave. A life was a temporary thing; a single, enervated grain of the recondite sands of time. But misery went far deeper than that. True, unadulterated torment could poison the very atmosphere for generations. People were momentary, in the grand scheme of things; here today, essentially flawed beings struggling not to be so, and gone tomorrow, never quite having managed it. Always, inexorably, having failed. The scale of their failure was varied, but it always existed. And those failings, their transgressions, were what lasted forever. Wrongs could not be righted, and only bitterness remained. She watched her mother carefully._

_The preacher intoned heavily, and the carved angels presided overhead, their desolate eyes searing straight through her, as if watching her very soul corrode, day after day after day. The room seemed to spin about her, as though the world had lost its equilibrium; had somehow begun to spiral off its axis. Outside, a magpie cawed. Winds howled and windows rattled. A storm was brewing, though of what nature, one couldn't tell. She shivered, and she told herself it was only because of the chill that permeated the chapel air, infusing it with the spirit of some long-forgotten lie._

_The unmerry widow was called on to speak, and there was something very wrong in the way she stared, vacant, expressionless into the despondent middle distance. Her caustic enunciations reverberated across the room, sending concentric circles of tireless virulence among the ranks of the assorted friends, lovers and family members gathered before her. She talked of love, and companionship, and a lifetime spent together, but all her words told of was pain, and regret, and the lingering resentment that tainted her heart. And he had won, in the end. The so-called dearly departed. He had got out before she had received any sort of retribution. He had been intolerable in life and victorious in death, and her position was just as untenable now that he had gone as it had been beforehand. He had died, and that was that. She had given him her life, and she couldn't get it back now. The last vengeance was his, and the ground felt like it was crumbling beneath the ancient, mildewed pews._

_It was raining heavily now, and she shivered again, glancing across to see if the boys were warm enough. They gazed blankly ahead. Hollow. Empty. Her mother sat next to them, but no, she didn't, she couldn't be, because...wait, what was...and, more importantly, where was...? As she whipped her head around, her perspective shifted, and she found herself standing at the head of the congregation. She blanched in awe at the sight of the aggrieved hands that gripped the pulpit, realising with some horror that they were her own. No, that couldn't be, it couldn't be true; she wouldn't believe it. Rain hammered at the roof and blood roared in her ears, and she approached the open casket. As she passed by the baptismal basin, it wasn't her own reflection staring back at her, aghast. It was her mother's. She retched as she saw him, in the coffin, his pallid face already stiffening. Not her father, but her husband. Oh, God, it couldn't be, it wasn't happening, but, oh, it was. She and her mother had more in common she could ever have imagined._

_It wasn't Kenneth's treachery that was tearing them all apart, after all. It was John's. And it wasn't Celia's malice that had infected this godforsaken day and the rest of their lives. It was Caroline's._

* * *

It took the phone's shrill, insistent wail to rouse Caroline from the near stupor she must have slipped into. She blinked at her surroundings, sweaty and anxious, her heart pounding, and was irritated to realise that she'd fallen asleep on the sofa. Her watch told her, plaintively, that it was only quarter past ten in the evening. The boys were still up, for God's sake.

"Hello?" she asked the phone, flatly, berating herself for not greeting her rescuer with more gratitude. It was Kate.


End file.
